The present invention pertains to computerized entertainment systems and to methods of constructing user interfaces for those systems.
The home electronics industry, in the midst of an on-going convergence of televisions and computers, has produced a new class of products, known as PC-TV systems, or personal-computer-television systems. In their simplest form, these systems allow users to selectively switch between using a video monitor, or display, to watch television or to support computer activities, like word processing, creating spread sheets, playing computer games, or even surfing the world wide web. A seminal example, the Gateway Destination PC-TV system, from Gateway 2000, Inc., not only weds a television to a personal computer, but allows system expansion to receive programming from internal sources such as video-cassette recorders, laser-disc players, and video cameras and from external sources such as direct-broadcast-satellite receivers, etc.
In home entertainment systems, a number of devices are often interconnected. Such devices may include various components such as a VCR, laser disc player, a stereo receiver, speakers, a television, a CD-player/recorder, a tape deck, equalizers, amplifiers, and the like. Increasingly, personal computers, with their attendant peripherals such as a DVD-ROM drive, printer, scanner, mass storage, internet browsers and other programs, mouse or pointing device, and the like have been used in home entertainment systems.
One problem in owning and operating a PC-TV system concerns adding and controlling new components. Conventional PC-TV systems generally use a categorical, one-size-fits-all approach, to controlling new components and thus include a very basic set of controls for all external components. For example, these systems provide a basic VCR category which typically only includes play, stop, pause, fast-forward, and rewind commands. Yet, many VCRs include more functionality, such as frame advance, set-up menu, programming, and so forth which is inaccessible through these controls. Thus, the limited basic controls of conventional PC-TV systems are more or less useless with the broad range of extra functions inherent to many components.
Currently, there are several partial solutions to this problem. One is the DestiVu (tm) AV Panel which provides static user interface (UI) controls for categories of devices. Individual functionality of an attached device is not available in the DestiVu system.
Through the use of simplified templates, the user may use xe2x80x9cleast common denominatorxe2x80x9d interface elements. For example, any VCR identified as a VCR will have certain core functions, such as xe2x80x9cplay,xe2x80x9d xe2x80x9crecord,xe2x80x9d xe2x80x9cstop,xe2x80x9d and the like. Many VCRs have a wide variety of further functions not necessarily present on all VCRs. The xe2x80x9cleast common denominatorxe2x80x9d solution does not provide access to the further functionality.
A second is the Crestron wireless remote control touchpad provides a graphical user interface (GUI) on a large hand held touch sensitive input device. However, the user interface elements must be manually placed in the user interface by the end user of the system. Similarly, each component capable of attachment to a system has its own set of functions it is capable of performing. Not all components will have the same features, but each component in a device category will meet a minimum standard of functions. This minimum standard of core functions is called the xe2x80x9cleast common denominator.xe2x80x9d Each device of a certain type will have at a minimum the xe2x80x9cleast common denominatorxe2x80x9d features.
Further, the Crestron solution uses a proprietary operating environment for generating its graphical user interface. The Crestron system is constructed to operate only on a proprietary platform. If the user is unaware of certain functions a device is capable of performing, the functionality of those features will not be present in the constructed user interface.
A third partial solution is the Phast Landmark (tm) system. The Phast system uses complex UI elements to describe many external devices. However, like the Crestron system, the Phast solution forces users to go through an elaborate manual setup procedure to define the interfaces for particular devices. In a windows environment, this entails a drop-and-drag technique. As in the Crestron system, if the user is unaware of certain functions a device is capable of performing, the functionality of those features will not be present in the constructed user interface.
Computer-based home entertainment systems are interconnecting an increasing number of components. Not all of these components can be connected directly to the computer-based controller. Current computer-based television solutions either support an internal tuner or tuners directly connected to an audio/video input on the computer based controller. Tunable devices such as televisions, stereo receivers, VCRs, satellite dishes, and the like are not supported by the current solutions if they are not connected directly to the computer-based controller. Tunable devices such as those described have a set of channels or stations which are available for viewing or listening.
Home entertainment systems may have a variety of peripheral devices connected together to from a complete system. Computers are increasingly more likely to be contained in such a home entertainment system. Peripheral devices are connectable to the system in any number of different configurations. A representative but not exhaustive list of such peripheral devices includes tunable devices such as television, VCR, Video Disk Player, Satellite Dish, and Stereo receiver. Each of these devices may be connected to various channel receiving components, such as an antenna, a satellite dish or satellite receiving system, a cable television cable, and combinations thereof. Further peripheral devices which may be connected to a computer-based home entertainment system may include, by way of example, DVD players, CD-ROMs, amplifiers, and equalizers. These further devices may also be connected to various channel receiving components, but are often connected simply to the computer via a direct connection to a computer-based controller or the like.
Accordingly, there is a need for a system with a much broader range of controls that can address the broad functionality not generally controllable using conventional control architectures.
To address these and other shortcomings, the inventor devised a computer-based system used to represent in a graphical user interface the interconnected components or peripheral devices of a home entertainment system. An embodiment of the computer-based system of the present invention includes a comprehensive database of device functionality capabilities, user interface elements, and channel maps, and a mechanism which responds to the addition of a new component by searching the database and constructing a specific control interface. The specific control interface addresses all the capabilities and functions of the new component without the need for manual input of functions and capabilities by the user.
A method of operating the computer-based system is also embodied by the present invention. The method comprises providing a database listing functions of one or more peripheral devices and corresponding graphical-user-interface elements (objects) for accessing the functions, searching the database for a particular media device, and displaying a graphical user interface for the particular media device based on functions and corresponding graphical user interface elements listed in the database.
In a further embodiment of the present invention, the interconnection of various components is determined, and tunable devices connected to the system are identified by the type of connection to a further channel receiving component they employ, namely xe2x80x9coff-air antenna,xe2x80x9d xe2x80x9ccable,xe2x80x9d xe2x80x9csatellite,xe2x80x9d or xe2x80x9cno antenna.xe2x80x9d xe2x80x9cNo antennaxe2x80x9d devices may include those directly hooked to the computer as described above, such as DVD-ROM, equalizers, amplifiers, and the like, which have functionality but not necessarily channels. A channel map for the various tunable devices is generated (or supplied in a database) and is used to identify the channels available for each device. Each tunable device propagates its available channels to the computer system (software) and each interconnecting device supplements the information appending control information and its own channel map information. The end result is a computer based model representing the components attached to the home entertainment system, and the channels they are capable of receiving, their available channels.
Further embodiments of the present invention include a database containing information concerning not only the channel map of connected devices, but also the functionality of devices and non-device specific user interface protocols from a database containing functionality information and user interface protocols. A user interface assembly program or module creates a computer based set of objects in a GUI allowing control of the devices attached to the system. Instead of requiring the user to generate manually a list of the available functions, capabilities, and available channels of the devices attached to the system, this embodiment uses a series of user interface elements or protocols which can be retrieved from the database when it has been successfully queried as to the functionality of the attached components.
A further embodiment of the present invention comprises a computer system having a first device database, and a software program having database lookup capabilities for all devices from a device database, and a second database for the retrieval not only of available channels for the device, but also the elements or user interface protocols for the generation of a computer based system of objects displayable on a computer screen allowing for computer control of all aspects of the computer based home entertainment system.
Other embodiments and advantages of the invention will become apparent after considering the accompanying drawings and the following detailed description.